


The Out of Time Man

by Arya Evanstan (BlackKryptonite)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Depression, Multi, Post-Avengers (2012), Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-10-12 16:21:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17470901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackKryptonite/pseuds/Arya%20Evanstan
Summary: He thinks about death. He thinks about the gun in his bedside drawer. He thinks about how easy it would be to go, how easy it would be to end it, how easy it would be to see Bucky again.Steve stares at his bedside table, it’s right there, he thinks, death is in that drawer. Death is in that drawer and it had never seemed as welcome before.Steve turns over and closes his eyes.It was twenty minutes past nine when Steve fell asleep.





	1. Chapter one

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fan fiction that I’ve written that I’ve actually been confident enough to publish, so please give me feedback and enjoy the story. 
> 
> I’m very sorry if this is actually trash and I haven’t noticed. I’m still writing so I don’t actually fully know where this is going to end but that’s okay. I can’t actually imagine anyone reading this... anyway! Enjoy.

Steve returns to his apartment at midday, it isn’t as if he has anything else to do.

He puts his groceries on his kitchen counter and meticulously organises the contents of the bags into the fridge and cupboards.

He looks at the clock, twelve forty-six. 

He sighs. Maybe he should work out. 

He looks down at his arms. Working out is a waste of time. His muscles aren’t going anywhere. 

Maybe he should go for a walk.

He looks outside, it’s still snowing heavily. 

Steve doesn’t like snow. He did before, before he was Captain America, before the war. 

But now it just reminds him. Reminds him of the freezing nights in Germany, of huddling up with the Commandos, sharing body heat. 

Reminds him of Dum-Dum’s gallows humour. Of Gabe’s stories about his Ma’s cooking. Of the others’ off key singing. 

Of Bucky’s body pressed against his in the tent. 

But worst of all it reminds him of the ice. The terrible, cold, suffocating ice. 

He was supposed to die then, he knows it. 

He was supposed to die a hero, he was supposed to join Bucky in heaven. 

‘Cause he’d go to heaven wouldn’t he? 

He was supposed to die. He’d wanted to die.

Heaven, he’s not really sure if he believes in God anymore. 

The more he sees in this new world the more ridiculous the idea of an all-powerful being becomes. 

Hell, he met a God. Well, Thor is technically an alien. But doesn’t that mean, if God is actually real, he’d also be an alien? 

Or maybe the ‘God’ that the bible talks about is really Odin. 

Thor had called him the ‘All-father’ hadn’t he? Does that mean that Odin came to earth once and they thought he was the only God?

He’d watch aliens reign down from the sky. How could he believe in God after that total disaster?

Steve rubs his eyes, he’s tired. He’s been tired since he woke up in this time. As if he didn’t just sleep for seventy years. 

Well, he thinks, it wasn’t exactly sleeping. 

Either way, it left him exhausted, as if he had walked miles, carrying a ton of weight on his shoulders.

He walks into his bedroom and pumps the heat up high. He already has a high body temperature but it isn’t enough. 

It isn’t enough to stop from waking up back in the ice.

It was one o’clock in the afternoon when Steve went to sleep.

———————

He wakes up again at five thirty-three. 

Sweating and panting from a nightmare he doesn’t recall.

He can’t bring himself to get out of bed, so he picks his laptop up off his bedside table and sits up so he can open it on his lap.

He’d figured out how to use it with the help of some manuals meant for the elderly. Bucky would have made fun of him for that, he thinks.

He opens safari, does a google search for ‘Tony Stark’.

Unsurprisingly Tony is donating millions to the re-construction of New York, he even started an organisation specifically dedicated to cleaning up the city.

Steve reads about it for a bit.

Steve gets bored and searches for ‘Glenn Miller’. He puts on a playlist but switches it off before the first song ends. 

It reminds him of Bucky.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to think about Bucky. He does. But he can’t. 

He can’t think about how he will never see him again. He can’t think about Bucky falling. He can’t think about how he failed his best friend.

To everyone else, Steve went into the ice seventy years ago. All the stuff that happened, the stuff they read about in history books, for them, happened decades ago.

But for Steve, it was less than a year ago that he watched his best friend die. He watched his best friend die and he couldn’t save him. 

He couldn’t reach him in time. He couldn’t jump after him-

Steve shakes his head. 

He gets out of bed. He walks into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator.

He stares at it’s contents for about five minutes.

He closes the fridge without getting any food.

He knows he should eat, but the ache in his stomach distracts him from thinking about other things. Worse things.

Anyway, he’s been days without eating before so he thinks he’ll be fine. 

He’s supposed to eat almost three times the amount of an average person, but right now he doesn’t really care. Not about himself anyway.

Steve pads quietly into the bathroom. He looks at his reflection in the mirror, he doesn’t look very good. He looks tired. Tired and sad. He is. 

Tired of being awake, he supposes.

He thinks he should probably shower though.

He peels of his clothes and turns on the shower, he puts the hot water up all the way. He lets the boiling water cascade down his neck, over his back. 

He leans his forehead against the still-cool tile, letting out a shaky breath.

Steve realises that he’s crying. 

He’s crying for no reason, or, he thinks, maybe he’s crying for every reason.

He thinks about Bucky and the tears come harder.

He thinks about Bucky’s smile. His laugh. His eyes.

Steve stays like that for a long time. Crying in the shower until he runs out of tears.

When he’s done, he washes his hair and body. He uses cheap shampoo, they never used to have this kind of stuff back in the forties. 

Back then, he remembers boiling pots of water on the stove to fill the bathtub. Bucky and him taking turns washing themselves with the same bar of soap, as the water got cold, in their tiny apartment.

Steve remembers everything about that apartment. 

The too thin walls you could hear everything through. The lumpy brown sofa that Bucky helped Steve move there after his mother had died. 

Their little old beds, that they pushed together in the winter to share body heat, especially those nights, when he was sick, and Bucky would give all the blankets to Steve, and he’d curl around him while they slept.

Steve remembers everything. Another effect of the serum. 

Some people forget that it didn’t just enhance his body.

He steps out of the shower, grabs his towel and dries himself, he doesn’t bother to dress. It’s not like he’ll be seeing anyone anyway.

No one visits him or anything. He should be used to it by now, it’s not as if he had many friends before the war. 

But he always had Bucky. Bucky was always there, until he wasn’t. And that was Steve’s fault, he couldn’t reach Bucky in time. 

Bucky had always saved him and he couldn’t save Bucky. He was too much of a coward to jump after him. He should’ve jumped after him.

Everyone thinks that Steve is brave. But he’s not, he isn’t brave like they think. 

That was Bucky, Bucky was always the brave one. Steve was just reckless. Reckless for Bucky, when Bucky was involved Steve would do anything for him. 

Even the stupidest most reckless things he could think of. If it would save Bucky.

But he didn’t jump after him. He couldn’t do it. That was his fault. Because, without Bucky, he’s just a reckless coward.

He let Bucky fall to his death. He let that happen and he doesn’t want to live with that. But he has to, doesn’t he? Because he’s supposed to be a hero, he’s supposed to save people.

Fury’s words from weeks ago echo in his head, “We’ll call you if we need you.” The director had said, “For now you’re free. Go do whatever you want.” 

But Steve doesn’t want to do anything. He wants to see Bucky, and that isn’t going to happen.

Steve flops down onto his bed, checking his phone. He hasn’t gotten any calls, from S.H.I.E.L.D. or anyone else. 

It’s not very surprising though, he doesn’t exactly know anyone. 

Not in the way he knew people in the forties, not in the way he knew Bucky or Peggy or Howard or the Commandos.

As for S.H.I.E.L.D. they obviously don’t need him. Neither do the Avengers apparently.

He thinks back to the battle, he’s sure they would’ve won even without him there.

It’s not like he’s as strong as Thor, or as smart as Tony or Bruce, he can’t fight as well as Natasha, he couldn’t even come close to sniping as well as Clint and he sure as hell can’t do as much damage as The Hulk.

They don’t need him. 

Sure, he helps, but he couldn’t have done anything without them. 

He couldn’t have taken down one of those huge flying-things like the others did. 

He took down a massive amount less Chitauri than Tony or Thor, not to mention, the Hulk.

There isn’t anything for him here. 

But after, wherever you go when it’s all over, Bucky’s there and the Commandos and his parents. Everyone he knew. 

And it’s only a matter of time before Peggy joins them. 

He loved Peggy, he did. Just not in the way he knew he should’ve. 

Not in the way everyone expected him to. Sure, he’d thought about marrying her, raising kids together after the war. 

But when he’d gone down into the water, when he’d thought he was going to die, all he could think about was that he’d see Bucky soon.

That Bucky was there, waiting for him, that he’d see him again.

He’d spoken to Peggy, everyone knew. 

They’d archived the recording, ‘Captain America’s last words’, thousands of random people had listened to him speak to Peggy. 

They’d written his life story. They’d written about how Captain America was in love with Margaret Carter. 

Hell, there were even movies about it. He’d looked it up after Tony mentioned it a few months ago.

There were five movies about his life, based on the biographies that other people had written.

Five movies about his life and not a single one was accurate. 

They’d gotten some of the details, just the obvious stuff. But there was so much wrong with them. 

Every one of them showed this momentus love affair between him and Peggy. 

Yes, he’d loved her, but never loved her more than Bucky.

Because he had. He’d loved Bucky more than anyone else in the world. 

He’d loved Bucky ever since they were little.

Bucky was everything to him and now, now Bucky was gone. Dead and gone. Like Steve should be.

Steve climbs into his bed but he doesn’t fall asleep. 

He thinks about everything, he thinks about the people now, who think they know him, he thinks about Peggy, Peggy who was always so sharp until age overtook her. 

He thinks about Bucky, who was probably in the place where they go when they die. Or maybe there’s nowhere, maybe once you’re dead you’re just gone. He thinks that wouldn’t be so bad either. 

He thinks about death. He thinks about the gun in his bedside drawer. He thinks about how easy it would be to go, how easy it would be to end it, how easy it would be to see Bucky again.

Steve stares at his bedside table, it’s right there, he thinks, death is in that drawer. Death is in that drawer and it had never seemed so welcome before.

Steve turns over and closes his eyes.

It was twenty minutes past nine when Steve fell asleep.


	2. Chapter two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death seems like this huge monumental thing, but really it’s just nothing, death is nothing. But life is everything, life is delicate, complicated and so easily lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so glad that people actually read the first chapter of this! I didn’t really think anything would happen, and now I’m writing more, which is awesome. Thank you so much to anyone reading this! Please leave feedback!!

Steve wakes up at four minutes past ten in the morning.

He’d dreamt about Bucky again but this time it wasn’t about the train, he’d dreamt about when they were younger, when they were just two kids from Brooklyn. He remembers how free they had been, before they had responsibilities, before they knew just how cruel the world could be.

He sits up in bed, his room is dark but he can’t bring himself to turn on the light. He thinks he should get up but his body feels too heavy to move. His eyes drift over to the closet across his room, his uniform is hung neatly inside it, just above his shield.

His shield was supposed to be a symbol of liberty and justice, a symbol of the United States of America. But now it was just a reminder of what used to be. Steve doesn’t want to look at his uniform, or even think about it. It’s too bright, too colourful, it seems wrong to wear it when the world is so dark, like a laugh at a funeral. 

Steve checks his phone, there’s a text from Tony, it reads, 

Change your mind yet?  
\- T S

After the battle of New York, Tony had offered all the avengers floors at Stark Tower, well, it’s Avengers Tower now.

Steve had politely declined. 

He doesn’t want to be a burden to anyone, especially Howard’s son.

Steve doesn’t text back.

He shuts off his phone and replaces it next to his laptop. He would check his emails, but he already knows there won’t be anything. There never is.

He thinks about getting up for some food but he still can’t find the energy to get out of bed. Instead, he lies in bed for the next few hours, staring at the drawer where the solution to all his problems sits waiting.

He falls asleep again at twelve forty-four PM.

———————

Steve wakes up choking under the ice that used to be there, he rolls off his bed and clutches at his throat trying desperately to get himself to breathe. But he can’t and maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe this is how he’s supposed to die. Alone and afraid on the floor of his bedroom. 

Steve passes out.

———————

Steve wakes up on the floor at four sixteen that afternoon.

His stomach is growling and his mouth is dry, he runs his thumb over his chapped lips, he needs water and food.

Steve’s lies on the floor, waiting for his body to do something. After a few minutes Steve remembers that he’s supposed to get up. He slowly pushes himself up from the ground, only now realising how weak he feels.

He stands up but his legs are wobbly and he has to lean on his bed for a bit, but eventually he feels steady enough to walk out of his room and into the kitchen.

He opens the refrigerator, blinking at the sudden light in his otherwise dark apartment, it’s full of food that he’d bought earlier that week, he grabs a couple bottles of water, and four protein bars from the pantry.

Steve returns to his bedroom, having drunk one of the bottles of water and eaten the protein bars.

He crawls back into his bed, feeling exhausted. 

He rolls over and stares at the draw once again. It would be so easy, he thinks, to put an end to this lifeless thing he’s become. There is no one here who needs him, there’s nothing for him to do.

He’s done, he’s done with life. 

And it would be so easy to just let go.

He turns away from the draw and closes his eyes. 

He falls asleep at two minutes past six.

———————

Steve wakes up with a start, he’d dreamt about the train again, but this time everything had stopped and it was just Bucky. Bucky, begging Steve to save him and Steve couldn’t, he couldn’t save him. Then Bucky had told Steve that it should have been him who died. That Bucky was supposed to survive. And he was right.

Steve checks the time on his phone, it’s a few minutes past midnight. 

Steve opens the draw beside his bed. 

The gun feels heavy in his hand, it’s a M1911 Pistol, almost the same as the kind they’d used in the war. SHIELD had given it to him when he’d moved into this apartment, they probably thought that he’d feel better having a weapon he was familiar with, and he kinda does.

Holding it feels right, but also wrong in someway that Steve can’t really understand. 

It’s already loaded, all he has to do is pull the trigger. 

It would be easy, a bullet to the brain stem and he’d be gone. 

The idea sounds so freeing in his head, no more living, well, he’s not sure he can call it that really. It’s more like just existing. Steve’s not alive anymore, so why not stop existing too?

Steve knows where to point the gun, he knows how to pull the trigger and he wants to die. It’s so easy, too easy even. 

Death seems like this huge monumental thing, but really it’s just nothing, death is nothing. But life is everything, life is delicate, complicated and so easily lost. 

Steve is done with it. He just can’t deal with it anymore.

And the solution is in his hand.

Steve puts the barrel of the gun in his mouth.

He pulls the trigger.

It is two fifty-one AM, and Steve Rogers is dead.

———————


	3. Chapter three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “He’s Captain America, that’s just not really something Captain America would do.”
> 
> Yeah, it wasn’t, Steve thinks. Captain America wouldn’t shoot himself in the head. But apparently, Steve Rogers would. And, for some currently unexplained reason, he’d survive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has actual dialogue in it, so that’s nice. I was kind of avoiding dialogue till this point because I don’t think I’m good at writing conversations. :-( 
> 
> Anyway, I hope this is alright!!

Blinding white light, drowning everything around it. 

Distorted screams filling the room.

Pain explodes in the back of his head.

Everything is dark.

———————

Steves is awake, his eyelids are heavy but he tries to open them anyway. He can’t.

He can hear something, a sort of soft clicking, slowly getting louder. 

Steve tries to move but he’s frozen.

Is he in the ice?

He doesn’t feel cold. But he doesn’t remember feeling cold the last time. Or maybe there was no last time, maybe he never woke up. Maybe it was all a dream to keep his frozen mind occupied? Could a frozen man dream? 

He supposes not, but he couldn’t know for sure, not with all the stuff they pumped into him. It’s not like he’s a scientist anyway.

The clicking stops next to Steve and he feels a warm hand turn his arm, feels the press of a needle against his vein.

Steve falls asleep once again.

———————

Steve wakes up, slowly checking if he can move this time. He thinks he’s still alive, but he can’t be sure until he opens his eyes.

He wiggles his toes and his fingers, and, as he’s about to open his eyes, Steve hears a voice coming from somewhere nearby. 

He tilts his head to listen, eyes still closed.

“I just don’t understand why he would do this,” says the voice, it’s clearly a man and Steve recognises the voice but he can’t remember who it is. 

There’s a reply but Steve can’t make it out. He thinks they’re talking about him.

“He didn’t seem depressed or anything when we saw him before,” the man says, there’s another reply but it’s too quiet for Steve to hear, they must be far away.

“I’m just saying, maybe he didn’t do it himself,” the man replies, sounding slightly defensive, “I mean, someone could have shot him through his, um, mouth, and then planted the gun… okay I know it sounds ridiculous, but, you know, he’s Captain America, that’s just not really something Captain America would do.”

Yeah, it wasn’t, Steve thinks. Captain America wouldn’t shoot himself in the head. But apparently, Steve Rogers would. And, for some currently unexplained reason, he’d survive.

Steve opens his eyes.

He’s in a small square room, the walls are all white and the floor is pale blue linoleum. 

There are large windows covering the wall to Steve’s left, but the glass is dark and opaque so that only a small amount of light comes into the room, and Steve can only just make out the city on the other side of it. 

On the wall to Steve’s right there’s glass door and another window, but this one is clear and it’s looking into a corridor outside the room. 

On the other side there are two people talking, who Steve now recognises as Clint Barton and Pepper Potts, the latter of whom he’d only met once at a fundraiser after the battle of New York. 

They haven’t noticed that Steve’s awake yet, but they seem to be waiting for something to come from the door at the other side of the hallway.

Steve looks back down at himself, he’s in a small white bed under a soft white blanket. He’s wearing a white hospital-like gown, but he’s otherwise completely naked.

He can feel a catheter between his legs, so that’s nice. There’s an IV in his arm and a clip on his finger connected to a moniter showing his unusually fast heart beat, but other than that there doesn’t seem to be much going on.

But there is. H e’d shot himself right in the head, the bullet must’ve gone right through.

He lifts his hand, touching the back of his head, but there’s nothing there, just skin and hair. 

He runs his hands all over his head, but there isn’t any evidence of a bullet going through anywhere.

Is the bullet still inside his head? Had it hit his skull and stopped? 

Or maybe he never even shot himself, maybe it was some kind of dream or hallucination? 

But he must have, Clint and Pepper were just talking about it, and why else would he be in a hospital bed?

Steve drops his arms just as he hears the door click open. The room brightens, and Steve looks at the window, it’s no longer dark and he can see the city, stretching out. The sun is high in the sky and there are no clouds to block it out.

It looks nice, Steve thinks.

Like the days when Steve and Bucky would dip in to their savings so they could spend the day at Coney Island, or, during to days when they were short on money, they’d lounge around at home with makeshift cardboard fans, in nothing but their boxer shorts.

Someone clears their throat and and Steve looks over to the door.

The Avengers, Nicholas J. Fury and Pepper Potts, and standing there with mixes of shock and amazement on their faces, except Fury’s, which is as stoic as always.

“Hi,” Steve says, and it comes out much rougher than he’d meant it to. He licks his lips, reaslising how dry his mouth feels.

“I’ll get you some water,” Pepper says, as if having read his mind, she leaves the room but comes back quickly with three cold bottles of water with the Stark Industries logo across them.

She hands one to Steve and puts the others on a small table next to the bed.

“Thank you,” Steve says gratefully, taking a sip of water.

The Avengers are staring at him, probably because he shot himself. He’d probably stare at him too.

“So cap,” Tony says, breaking the silence, “that was a super violent way to accept my invitation- ow! Jesus! I’m just trying to lighten the mood!” He rubs his side, it must hurt, after being elbowed by the actual Black Widow.

“Yeah well,” says Steve, “I got no idea how to text. Also can someone tell me how the hell I’m still alive.” 

“Oh um… Fury?” Tony suggests, turning to the man in question.

“Right,” Fury begins, as awkwardly as it could be for him, “When you came out of the ice SHIELD took some samples from you before you woke up, the usual, tissue, skin, hair, blood, bone marrow, you know.”

“And?” Steve replies.

“We came to the conclusion that you’re cells regenerate a whole lot faster than they deteriorate, giving the appearance of staying the same, forever.” Fury continues, “In other words, you wont age past your current age and there isn’t any possible way you could die, that we know of. And, trust me, we know a lot.”

“Fuck.” Steve says, covering his face with his hands.

He thinks he’s going to cry in front of his whole team.

And he is, he’s crying so hard that his whole body is shaking. And he doesn’t care that there are people watching him. He doesn’t give a single shit. Because Bucky’s dead and he’s alive, he’s alive forever, and that is possibly the worst thing he has ever heard.

“Wow, okay,” Clint says quietly, “This is not what I was expecting at all.”

———————


	4. Chapter four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sorry, Bruce.” Steve says out loud because that’s really the only thing he feels like saying right now.
> 
> The Hulk just roars and smashes the wall that was between the room and the corridor.
> 
> But the others go quiet, staring at Steve with faces that he’d rather not look at right now. Steve can’t really bring himself to care about how they feel.
> 
> Steve hears Tony’s helmet flip open behind him, he doesn’t turn around.
> 
> “What the fuck is happening,” Tony says, and that’s exactly what they’re all thinking.
> 
> Steve doesn’t reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so bad at writing lol

Steve lay on his side, he’d stopped crying a while ago but his pillow was still damp and his eyes were red rimmed and puffy.

The others had left the room shortly after they realised he wasn’t going to talk again any time soon. The sun had gone down and Steve stared out the window at the bright lights shining from the buildings in front of him.

He hates this. 

The single thing that Steve wants most has been taken from him. 

It feels like everyone who he’s cared about are on a train, and it’s starting, it’s leaving now but he’s too late, he’s out of time.

He’s out of time and they’re leaving, they’re leaving without him and he’s trapped there on the platform, standing there watching the back of the train.

And the worst part is, no matter how hard he tries, he’ll never catch it, he’s always late, he’s always out of time and there’s nothing he can do to change that.

He wants to scream, he wants to punch the wall, he wants to smash through the window and fall and fall and fall until he stops, until he stops and he’s dead and gone.

But he can’t, he can’t to that because that’s not what he’s supposed to do, and he can’t die. 

He can’t fucking die.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t fall.

Steve slides out of the bed quietly, gripping the IV stand and wheeling it beside him to the window.

He looks down to the street, he must be close to the penthouse. 

He can see the tiny cars and people walking around, there aren’t many people directly below the window, it is night and the tower has a lot of security, and not a lot of reasons for civilians to be around it right now.

He could just smash the glass and step off the ledge-

No he can’t. He can’t just do something like that.

But he already did, right?

He shot himself right in the head and nothing even happened…

But the glass would be thick and he probably wouldn’t be able to break it, it’s Tony’s tower, the glass is probably missile proof.

But hadn’t Loki thrown Tony through the window during the battle? He’d just tossed him right through it, easily.

But Loki was basically a god, would Steve be strong enough to break it? 

He presses his hand against the glass, his palm flat against the cool surface. 

Slowly, he applies more pressure, building it up more and more, pressing hard against the glass, trying to make himself look inconspicuous, in case anyone is watching him.

He feels the glass start to crack against his hand, spreading out like a spider's web under his palm.

The glass isn’t as thick as he’d expected, he hasn’t even pressed very hard and the glass is cracked.

Steve pulls the IV out of his arm, pushing away the stand, he takes his hand back from the glass, makes a fist and punches it as hard as he can. 

It shatters outward from the crack he’d made before, leaving a massive empty space in the window, Steve feels wind on his face, he closes his eyes and breathes in the fresh, cool air.

He doesn’t feel the shards of glass piercing the skin on his arm, or hear the sound of shouting behind him.

Steve steps forward, spreading his arms.

And he’s falling.

He opens eyes fly open as the wind rushes up at him, he can see the ground getting closer and closer and-

He stops, just a few feet above the pavement.

He’s dangling from his arm, he looks up behind him, it’s Iron Man.

Tony grabs Steve’s other arm, awkwardly pulling Steve towards him and managing to manoeuvre him into an incredibly uncomfortable bridal carry.

Tony flys the back up and into the tower through the broken window, it’s a lot more damaged now, Steve supposes that Tony probably smashed some more on his way out.

Steve wonders why he is freaking out.

He feels weirdly calm, with an underlying feeling of disappointment about never reaching his destination, but otherwise he feels the same as usual.

Usual, though, is a pretty bad state for him right now.

They land and Tony puts Steve down but keeps a hold of Steve’s left wrist, probably to make sure he doesn’t try jump out the window again. 

The other Avengers seem to be freaking out quite a lot. 

They’re all yelling, and Steve can’t really make out much but the repeated, “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!” From Clint and the extremely load roar from the Hulk, who Steve is just noticing, is no longer Bruce.

Steve feels bad about that, he doesn’t think Bruce likes turning into the Hulk very much.

“Sorry, Bruce.” Steve says out loud because that’s really the only thing he feels like saying right now.

The Hulk just roars and smashes the wall that was between the room and the corridor.

But the others go quiet, staring at Steve with faces that he’d rather not look at right now. Steve can’t really bring himself to care about how they feel.

Steve hears Tony’s helmet flip open behind him, he doesn’t turn around.

“What the fuck is happening,” Tony says, and that’s exactly what they’re all thinking.

Steve doesn’t reply.

———————

“Okay, so this is where you’ll be staying until we can baby proof the your floor of the tower,” Tony says, leading Steve by the arm with the rest of the group following close behind.

Bruce is wrapped in the blanket that was on the the bed Steve had slept in and he had plaster dust in his hair, but he seemed like he didn’t care at all.

“This floor was originally going to be Bruce’s so I made it Hulk friendly, but it was still under construction when Bruce moved in, so he ended up taking the empty floor above this one, and then he decided to stay up there so, yeah this one’s empty.” Tony says, finally letting go of Steve’s arm.

There are deep bruises on Steve’s wrist, he stares at them, counting down in his head how long it takes for the bruises to disappear.

1- 2- 3- 4- 5- 6- 

They’re gone in six seconds, that’s a few seconds faster than usual.

“Captain Rogers?” 

It’s weird being called Captain Rogers by someone who just witnessed him just out a window from one of the top floors of a building.

Steve looks up from his arm, Bruce looks back at him strangely.

He doesn’t say anything.

Steve turns around, there’s a large sofa there and Steve sits down.

“Can you excuse us for a second?” Bruce says, leading the others to the corner of the room.

They’re quiet but Steve can hear what the group are saying.

“I think we should take shifts staying down here with him, just in case he tries something,” Bruce suggests, “he’s already tried to kill himself twice, someone should watch him.”

“He wasn’t trying to kill himself,” Natasha says, the others frown at her, “the first time yeah, he was trying to kill himself, that much is clear. But the second time, he just found out he can’t die, and he’s smart enough to know we weren’t lying, there has to be something else going on.”

“Well, self harm is pretty common in people who are suicidal,” Pepper offers.

“I guess jumping out of the fifty-first floor does sound like Steve’s idea of self harm,” Tony says, earning a glare from Pepper.

“Bruce is right though, we should take turns staying down here, maybe keeping him occupied,” Natasha says, and the others nod in agreement.

“I’ll stay down here for today and you guys should sort out some kind of roster so we can make sure someone’s down here at all times.” Bruce suggests, the others agree and they walk back over to Steve.

“So-”

“You don’t have to explain, I heard everything you said,” Steve interrupts Bruce, “it’s fine, I get it.”

The others aren’t sure what to do, so they say goodbye and they leave Steve and Bruce together, taking the elevator up stairs.

Bruce sits down on the sofa next to Steve, they don’t talk for a while, it’s awkward but there isn’t really anything to say.

Eventually Steve breaks the silence, “you know, you don’t have to babysit me,” he says, “it’s not like I can actually kill myself.” 

“But you can hurt yourself,” Bruce replies, turning to face Steve, “and judging by what you just did, I think you want to.” 

Steve does answer, choosing instead to close his eyes and rest his head on the back of the sofa.

Steve sighs and stands up, “I’m going to bed,” he says, “are you gonna stay here or do you have to watch me sleep as well?” 

“No it’s okay,” he says, and Steve walks down the hall to where Tony had said the bedroom was.

“Jarvis?” Bruce asks, looking up at the ceiling after Steve is out of sight.

“Yes, Doctor Banner?” Jarvis replies.

“Please let me know if anything happens,” Bruce asks, getting comfortable on the couch and closing his eyes, he hadn’t slept much since SHIELD had alerted them that Steve had shot himself, they’d asked him to take a look at Steve’s cells, and help out with his recovery.

He’d also been thinking a lot about Steve.

When he’d met him, he hadn’t really noticed anything off about him, he hadn’t seemed depressed or sad, but Bruce knows that you can’t always tell with some people. 

But Steve had seemed fine.

Or maybe none of them had looked enough to notice.

Maybe there had been signs, maybe it was obvious but they were too busy fighting with Captain America, that they never even bothered to talk to Steve.

———————


End file.
